The purpose of writing this document is to a deliver a report on three most favorable ways of achieving the superior way of conducting the operations in Henderson Printing, a business record books printing firm that is currently suffering from aging and complex information systems where I have been working for six months now as a hired director of continuous improvement with the responsibility of achieving lean production due to limitation on resources(Agrawal, Atasu& Van, 2018). I have also been assigned the responsibility of total quality control, identification of defects in the processing firm and the best approaches to eliminate them; that is Six Sigma and the implementation of best and accepted as standard techniques things in Henderson Taste, that is best practice.
Henderson printing is a business record books printing firm located in Merge an arid area in the north of Dar. Surprisingly Henderson printing processes their papers from palm imported from tropical highland of Darwin. The paper is then cut into desired sizes printed and stapled to respective books like journals, ledgers and so on (Hitt,Xu, & Carnes, 2016)).
Henderson printing collaborates with its products consumer through the following means.
Henderson printing uses the print media like the bill boards and newspaper to create awareness on their books and services as wells as the radio and televisions advertisement to their customers.
When it comes to communication technology Henderson printing has not been left behind, it has been involved in several social media advertisement and it also own a web page where the blogs pertain to the product are posted (Bendoly, Wezel&Bachrach, 2005).
Henderson printing understands and values the impression they leave to their customer and therefore tries its best to implement it through what is heard from its mouth (Ritzman, 2016). Also, on the covers of the books printed here a simple and small but significant advertisement is placed.
The main customers of this institution are cooperatives societies, banks, processing and manufacturing firms, schools, farms and government and non-government institutions. Due to this fact they are therefore the main target of advertisement (Brandon, et al. 2016).
In the entire advertisement platform used by Henderson printing a well highlighted slogan saying, “save money even without thinking about it”. This slogan and the appealing branding, packaging and after sales services offered gives other similar firms a knock out in competition (Mahadevan, 2015).
The Henderson printing apply the divisional organization structure where duties are assigned personnel’s to carry out the operations in levels starting from the chief executive officer to the subordinate work force(Cachon&Terwiesch, 2017).
The supply chain of the organization is the system of departments, labor source, duties and activities, information communication and storage and the resources involved in transformation of a product; raw material from the supplier and moving it to the customer (Smith,Maull& CL , 2014)).
Inputs, their sources and how they are reconfigured to the product
Henderson printing has uses the following resources to produce books.
The genesis of production is based on logs as the main raw material. It is the main raw material. The logs are imported from up country rainy and tropical forest and brought to the milling firm that is located adjacent to Henderson printing. These logs are then debarked to remove the trees bark and used for fuel purpose or manure making among other uses (Swink, Melnyk, Hartley &Cooper, 2017). The wood fiber is then separated from the wood, physically by passing them and hot water between rotating wheels that tears the wood apart. The pulp is the screened, washed and refined. After the refining process the pulp is bleached to decolorize the pigment in it. The final refinement is done there after and the pulp is dried.
The papers from the above process are cut into desired sizes and printed using dyes. The now printed papers are bided into books.
The machines used varies from the power saws used to cut down the logs in the forest, the transporting vessels, lifts and cranes, the fiber and wood separating machines to driers and printers.
The main source of power is electricity in Henderson printing. The electric power is used to run the machineries. Water in the company is used as a raw material as well as a cooling agent for the frequently hot running machines (Malhotra, Singhal, Shang &Ployhart, 2014). Electricity power has been harnessed from a nearby geothermal power producing plant. Water has been piped from a distant all season river whose source is the tropical highland.
The processing activities are carried out in George plaza. The building was inherited by Henderson from his late father.
The human labor is the main source of work force for Henderson printing. Majority of the force source is the local people and few young graduates. The level of education is not a big factor in this firm and instead much emphasis is on the past period of time an individual have been working in this firm.
Diagrammatic representation of paper processing
The printed books are distributed to various book mats by the company. There is also a group of customers who buy directly from us while others buy from our marketers and middle men (Heizer, Render, Munson, Sachan, 2017).
The process of milling the woods from the forest is the main value adding process while bleaching, dying and printing carries the later important value adding processes.
The main inputs in the major possessing levels are the wood pulp. When the wood pulp is sheared it is bleached and dried, the key input here is the bleaching agent and finally the papers are printed with a major input printing ink.
The papers are cut into recommended sizes and printed in different formats; they are then bided and parked ready for distribution (Kato, Nakajima, Saito, Okitsu, Shiga &Miki, 2015).
The processing of long to paper pulp increases the value of wood from the forest. Printing and binding increases the value of plain paper to that of a book.
Information technology has a lot to account when it comes to customer relation management. It has helped us to keep track of all transactions carried out between us and our customers. Further information technology has helped us to keep track of regular and loyal customers and therefore it becomes easy for us to treat them valuably (Devalkar, Anupindi&Sinha, 2018). Also communication between us and our customers has become easy and confidential due to information technology.
Internet has contributed to our customer’s business relation; we have been carrying out online marketing through creating blog online. Our customers have been also making orders online and we deliver goods to them.
The aim of the business is to make profit, therefore we evaluate the cost of production from the raw materials to time the goods are delivered to our customers to determine the amount of profit we make.
Here we determine the amount of capital invested in the business. We classify them as current assets and fixed assets; that is assets meant for resale and assets meant for production of other goods.
Time is very crucial and here in Henderson printing we consider time in all aspects like order delivery time, processing time, and transport time as well as loading and offloading time.
The three main processes we are involved in is importation of logs and dyes, processing them into papers and finally printing and biding the papers into books and parking them ready for distribution.
The first improvement opportunity is in quality of our papers. We need quality log for quality books. Therefore we are going to be very specific on the standards of logs that we import to make sure the quality desired is met.
It goes without saying that it is efficient to work with quality raw material than working with poor quality material; therefore this will increase the possessing speed and therefore save the production time. Quality logs and quality dyes will have a direct impact to the quality of paper we produce.
On this sector we still also need to define a good transport system that we will be using to save on time of transport and cost of importation (Santibanez, et.al 2016).Time is a very important aspect in production, saving on time implies saving on production process and therefore increasing the efficiency in output delivery (Choi, Cheng & Zhao, 2016).
Fast transportation of raw material will enable early commencing of processing activities. When this is accompanied by quality standard logs and dyes then the speed of processing will certainly increase.
With fast transport system of the logs and the dyes, it will be easy to maintain continuous production without stoppages caused by lack of raw materials. When Henderson printing about run out of these raw materials we can make an emergency order with assurance of timely delivery and thus maintain productivity.
We will give a standard quality of log and dyes we need from our supplier in terms of size and the type of tree we need the logs. We are also going to shift our transport system from the use of lorries to use of train to import logs because lorries have a small carriage capacity and therefore not fully reliable. This will also help us save on label as now only few workmen will be required as this will reduce the number of drives needed.
We will first change our method of production from labor intensive to capital intensive. Quality
Machine production is better than human possessing, because with the use of machines it is possible to set standards and maintain that uniform quality production.
Machines maintain a continuous processing unlike human who will need to rest and later continue with the processing activities thus increasing the processing speed. Also the speed of a machine is faster than human being. These all factors will increase the processing speed.
The machine efficiency is higher than human efficiency where a standard quality is a question of concern. This is because there is little variance if uniformity of the quality and processing is continuous and less affected by absenteeism of the human labor power.
Machines do not need rest time like human do, this ensures continuous production and can be carried out both at during the day and night and still maintain a low cost production processing.
We embrace the use of modern fast printers and modern bidding machines to make the books and transport them to various book mats to reach our customers.
The use of fast printers will increase the speed of printing. Also the use of fast bidding machine will increase the number of books made per unit time thus increasing the speed of processing.
When we distribute the books to various book mats will increase the speed at which we will reach our customers.
When to books are distributed to various book mats it becomes efficient for our customers to access them rather than when they are expected to come for them in the processing site.
When these books are distributed form the firm they create a room for more production. Otherwise mass storage for this books where space is limited could lead to stoppage of production.
The use of machines in production will generally improve the quality of our product and will enable us to meet the desired quality of our customers and achieve it on time. This is because machines are faster than human production and the uniformity ids guaranteed (Thomé, Scavarda & Scavarda, 2016). Transportation change of raw materials from the use of lorries to train will increase the amount in volume of materials to the firm. This will assure production is maintained at a given desired rate. The transport the books to book mats adds economical value to books (Mahadevan, 2015).
The papers produced under this new technology will be hard and therefore it will enable us to make quality books that will give our customers long period of services. The new printing designs, logo and slogan will give our customer an appealing look and thus it will act like an advertising tool (Walker, Chicksand, Radnor &Watson, 2015).
The logo and the slogan will enable us to be in a better position in market competition. The appealing color prints will improve our meet for customers need while the, “save money even without thinking about it” will make the targeted customers tend to react rational to our products when they see them.
The use of machines to substitute human source of labor will give us a continuous improvement in mass production and quality improvement (Stevenson, 2004). It will also reduce the recurring expenses of wages and salaries. The new introduced logo will also help now and in future to advertise for our books.
The measure on changes I have I highlighted will be determined in the scale of cost of production to the profit ratio. The amount of capital invested to buy the raw materials and process them to the final product in comparison to the profit per unit (Swink, Melnyk, Hartley&Cooper, 2017).
The customer’s response to our product will be determined by the number of units sold in a given period of time and comparing it with that of the previous time of trade.
We will also put into consideration to what our customer will comment on our changes to the product.
The improvement brought about by the new changes will be determined by these key factors; that is the reduction in cost of production, increase in profit made per unit sale and the number of units sold in a certain period of time in comparison to the previous period.
The very first impact will be the reduction of none and less skilled labor power that is mainly sourced from the locals and increase the number of specialists working in the company. Those who will be retained will be required to attend specific classes to be retrained to get the new skills to fit the changed operations of production (Kundu, Jain &Kumar, 2015).
The newly installed labor will be divided into stages and each level assigned dedicated specialists with well-defined responsibility. It will be worth noting that the number of employees will be significantly reduced due to the newly installed special, modern and faster machines thus saving on cost of labor.
Decision making of the company will be conducted by the board of governors but it will not be allowed to implement them until the executive director signs them valid after the consultation of the parties to be affected in an open forum to ensure that all parties are contented (Holweg, Davies, Meyer &Schmenner, 2018). This will enable the parties gain confidence on what they are doing in the company; this will improve their morale and will have a direct impact on quality output.
To our employees who will be retained and retrained, the base salary will be increased with 5% and incentives will be also increased with1%. The workers will be given insurance cover, and retirement benefits. This will boost their morale to work. Also every worker will be entitled to leaves after every two months to break the sense of monotony to work and enable them to regain production energy.
To our customers we will give them discount on bulky buying and also give them prizes to show loyalty to them and improve our relationship (Chiarini &Vagnoni, 2015).
Conclusion
To sum up this course has been an eye opener to leadership meant for improvement of processing firms (Devalkar,Anupindi&Sinha, 2018). I have realized that the achievement of this will be based on improvement of independent level and departments of production.
Reference
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